Except, perhaps, William Barr. Trump’s nominee to succeed Sessions, Barr appears to share most of Sessions’ most extreme views, having defended the former attorney general’s legacy and opposed any efforts to build a fairer justice system.

That places him well outside the mainstream consensus on crime and incarceration — and the Senate should question him vigorously on it. Republicans claim to support bipartisan criminal justice reform. Now is the time to prove it.

Very few policymakers oppose this bipartisan movement to end mass incarceration. Until recently, Jeff Sessions was one of them. As attorney general, Sessions went out of his way to make drug sentences more punitive, rolled back efforts to rein in unconstitutional policing, and schemed to prosecute people for selling marijuana even in states where it’s legal. Sessions also broke with Trump to oppose the First Step Act, arguing, incorrectly, that any attempt to back off excessively punitive drug sentences would jeopardize public safety.

With Sessions gone, the bill — and further efforts to reform the nation’s criminal justice system — might find support in the Department of Justice. . But the more you look at Barr’s record, the more he looks like a direct ideological successor to Sessions. Just a month ago, Barr took to The Washington Post with other Republican attorneys general to praise Sessions’ record at the Justice Department, specifically commending him for combatting “the Ferguson Effect” — a myth that blames Black Lives Matter for crime — and for pursuing longer sentences for even minor drug offenders. Barr and his colleagues even credited Sessions for halting an increase in crime, an implausible claim that no serious researcher could make with a straight face. And in 2015, Barr signed a letter opposing the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, the First Step Act’s predecessor, which also had overwhelming Republican support. A minority of Republican senators — led by Tom Cotton — opposed the bill. Even within his own party, Barr is an extremist.

Barr — who served as George H.W. Bush’s attorney general from 1991 to 1993 — was also an early and vocal defender of mass incarceration, another fact that ought to give the Senate pause. In 1992, he enthusiastically circulated a research brief called “The Case for More Incarceration,” which argued that “we are incarcerating too few criminals, and the public is suffering as a result.” When federal courts stopped states from throwing more people into overcrowded prisons, Barrintervened to help them continue. If this destroyed lives in the process, Barr wrote, too bad. It’s “simply a myth,” he said, that there are “sympathetic people in prison.”

While it’s true that many (or even most) politicians supported mass incarceration policies in the 1990s, almost all of them — from Bill Clinton, to Joe Biden and Newt Gingrich — have reversed course. Some, like Gingrich, are even leading efforts to reduce imprisonment. But Barr’s recent statements suggest he remains stuck in the past.

In sum, if Trump was looking for an attorney general to continue Sessions’ legacy (without any of the baggage from that messy recusal business), he could hardly do better than William Barr. What remains to be seen is what the Senate will do about it.

Superficially, this shouldn’t be a hard choice. With most of the Republican caucus supporting criminal justice reform, and most Democrats likely to oppose Barr on principle, there are more than enough votes to sink Barr’s nomination and force a consensus choice — one who will work with Republicans and Democrats to build a fairer, more effective justice system.

Grawert is senior counsel and John L. Neu justice counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.